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haunted house

When demons or
ghosts take up residence, a house is said to be "possessed" or
"haunted." It is not clear why demons or ghosts would confine
themselves to quarters, since with all their alleged powers, they probably could be
anywhere or everywhere at any time. If they really wanted to terrorize the
neighborhood, they could take turns haunting different houses.

Ideas about haunted houses often originate in movies such as The
Amityville Horror, a fictional movie based on a true fraud. While it is quite common for a Catholic priest to bless a house or
perform what is called a "routine
exorcism," it is not common to perform what is called a "real exorcism" on houses, despite
what was depicted in the movie. In the case of Amityville, the real devils were George and Kathy Lutz, who
concocted a preposterous story to help them out of a mortgage they couldn't
afford and a marriage on the rocks (Schick & Vaughn 1998: 269-270).
Their case was helped along by the media (New York television station
Channel 5), self-proclaimed
demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, and Gene Campbell, who produced an
infra red time-lapse photograph of a boy (?) with no eyes at the foot of a
staircase. The photo was first shown on the Merv Griffin show, few years
after it was allegedly taken at the Amityville house, to promote the first
film of the alleged horror.*

Not all hauntings are obvious frauds. Some are hoaxes instigated by disturbed teenagers trying to get
attention by scaring the devil out of their parents and siblings (Radin
1997: 280; Randi
1986, 1995).

Some cases involve otherwise normal
people hearing strange noises or having visions of dead people or of objects moving with no
visible means of locomotion. Hearing strange noises in the night and letting the
imagination run wild are quite natural human traits and not very indicative of diabolical
or paranormal activity. Likewise, visions and hallucinations are quite
natural, even if unusual and infrequent, in people with normal as well as with very active
imaginations (Sagan 1995).

Nevertheless, the market for "ghostbusters"
flourishes. They go to allegedly haunted houses
for television programs such as Sightings. They walk around with an electronic
device that picks up electromagnetic fields. If the needle moves, they claim
they have evidence of poltergeist activity, even though just about anything
gives off a measurable level of
electromagnetic radiation.

Many people report physical changes in haunted places, especially a
feeling of a presence accompanied by a temperature drop and hearing
unaccountable sounds. They are not imagining things. Most hauntings occur in
old buildings, which tend to be drafty. Scientists who have investigated
haunted places account for both the temperature changes and the sounds by
finding sources of the drafts, such as empty spaces behind walls or currents
set in motion by low frequency sound waves (infrasound) produced by such mundane objects
as extraction fans. Some think that electromagnetic fields are inducing the
haunting experience.*

Even if I provided plausible physical
explanations for a million poltergeists in a million different places at a
million different times, there is always the possibility that the next one
that pops up will be the real thing. So, those who believe in poltergeists,
ghosts, and haunted houses can always take refuge in the fact that nobody
ever has enough information to debunk every ghost story, and even if they
did, the next one might prove the debunkers wrong!

As a skeptic, all I can say with
confidence is that when one considers the requirements for a ghost story to
be true, the most reasonable position is that there is a naturalistic
explanation for all these stories, but we often do not or cannot have all
the details necessary to provide that explanation. We must rely on
anecdotal evidence, which is always incomplete
and selective, and which is often passed on by interested, inexperienced,
superstitious parties who are ignorant of basic physical laws. Thus, there
will always be stories like the "Bell
Witch" story that attract much attention, especially when made into
movies, that will lead many people to think that maybe there is something to
this one, even if all the other ghost stories are false. The "Bell
Witch" is alleged to be "a sinister entity that tormented a family on
Tennessee’s frontier between the years of 1817 and 1821."*
The likelihood that we don't have all the evidence in this case is
proportionate to the number of years that have passed since the events
allegedly took place.

On the other hand, I have it on very good
authority that there are very good reasons that ghosts only appear in the
dark and in places where their true nature is obscured in some way so that
they cannot be clearly seen or heard. Since ghosts themselves have no
senses, it would not be fair for them to appear in broad daylight where
everybody could see them as they really are. Ghosts are inveterate
tricksters and it is much easier to trick human beings in situations where
their senses can be easily manipulated. Ghosts also enjoy "seeing" people
deceive themselves, especially people who use scientific equipment in ways
that indicate that they have no idea what they are doing. Besides, ghosts
have found that many people are afraid of the dark and that fear makes their
work much easier.

Some ghosts have found extraordinary ways
of tricking people. For example, paranormal investigator
Ben Radford investigated the
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Courthouse Ghost that showed itself on film from a
surveillance camera as a glowing spot drifting in front of a patrol car
parked beneath some trees.

Radford came armed only with his brain and knowledge.
He had no lab coat and no scientific equipment.
He came up with a hypothesis and tested it by putting a ladybug on the
lens of the camera. Sure enough, he reproduced the ghost on the film. "In
the end, it was in fact a bug or insect of some sort that was on the lens of
the surveillance camera," said
Radford, a known skeptic and managing editor
of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Little does he know that ghosts often
appear as ladybugs. Nice try, Ben! He obviously hasn't read the Secret
Writings of Descartes: Ghosts on the Machine. Coming soon to
the History Channel.

According
to a 2005 Gallup poll, 37% believe in haunted houses, down from 42% five
years ago but up from 29% in 1990.A Pew poll in 2009 found that more Americans believe in haunted houses than believe global warming
is real.